Senior project fulfills a dream

It was Christeen Woods' dream to publish a book, so for her senior project at Sunnyside High School, that's just what she did.

Woods said the idea occurred to her in April last year, when she started to think about what to do for a senior project. She found the task to be slightly more daunting than expected.

It took her 32 hours of work, 25 of those hours just to revise the 30 poems she selected for the book. The remainder of the time was taken up by researching how to publish, formatting the poems and uploading the materials for the book to the publishing website.

Woods said she's been writing poetry since she was in sixth grade. It's resulted in a collection of 130 poems, about a third of which were written in the last year or two. She chose the best to put into the collection.

The book is now available for purchase at lulu.com. The best way to find it is to search for the author's name, but the title of the book is "In Your Face," the result of a comment from her mentor.

"There was a day my mentor pointed out that all my poems said, 'I hate you... oh, I'm sorry I said that," Woods said. "He said, 'I want the words to hit me in the face.'"

She removed the apologies and found her work was stronger for it. So she used that crucial piece of advice as the title of the collection.

Woods goal in life is to become a psychologist and help children with the change from childhood to adolescence. She'll be attending Heritage University after graduating.

She presented the project last week, earning 18.9 out of a possible 20 points. She said it was a relief because of the emotional stress involved in putting the work together.

"In January a poem affected me so emotionally it stopped the project for a month," Woods said. "This is my heart."

The project did help her overcome her shyness and allowed her to discuss personal issues in an open way.

"I know who my friends and family are," she said. "And that's all that matters."